Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

A series of brown pelicans rescued from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill took flight last July from Egmont Key National Refuge. At least one of those banded birds remains here, off the coast of Anna Maria Island.
Oil from the massive spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico never reached here ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

The beach was as bright as a football field under Friday night lights as the bulldozers shoved, sculpted and shaped the sand in the second stage of a major Island renourishment project.
Midway through last week, Great Lakes Dredge and Dock, an international dredging contractor, shifted its work zone north, from ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Organizers are seeking Island dancers to shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, kick in the world’s longest conga line on sand.
“I instigate conga lines on a fairly regular basis,” said event originator and musician Mike Sales, a regular performer at several local venues.
Sales is working with several others on the conga line, which ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Reaction to the two presentations on a cell tower made April 8 to a committee formed by the Anna Maria Island Community Center executive board was swift.
Anna Maria resident Hal Badger said it sounds like a cell tower at the community center is a “done deal.”
With both presenters recommending a ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Anna Maria Island accommodation managers, owners and rental agents said two weeks ago that their occupancy rates in February 2011 were extremely good and better than figures from last February.
Those assessments turned out to be pretty accurate.
Revenues from resort tax collections in February 2011 were up 1.1 percent against the ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Bradenton Beach commissioners on April 21 are set to consider the first reading of a draft telecommunications ordinance that prohibits cell towers anyplace but government property.
The meeting at city hall, 107 Gulf Drive N., will begin at 1 p.m.
The ordinance, drafted to comply with federal law but protect the local ...

Monday, April 18th, 2011

The state study is not begun and no recommendations have been made, but veterans of past skirmishes over the future of the Cortez Bridge vowed last week to oppose any high-rise span at the location.
“A new bridge would wipe out the historic village” of Cortez, longtime high-rise bridge opponent Jim ...